TITLE:
Holy Wafers in Pharmacy: Who Was Curé Arnal?
AUTHORS:
Georg A. Petroianu
KEYWORDS:
Cachets a Pain, Hosties, Oblaten, Arnal, Joseph Lambert, Limousin, Stanislas
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Historical Studies,
Vol.11 No.1,
March
30,
2022
ABSTRACT: Historically, most
medicines were associated with a horrible taste (goût repoussant). Sulphate
of quinine, widely used at the beginning of the XIXth century as
remedy for malarial intermittent fever, certainly fits the description. Southwestern littoral France, was an
area of endemic malaria and the population widely exposed to the medicine.
French pharmacist Stanislas Limousin (1831-1887) is credited with the
introduction of cachets enclosing medicine
and thus greatly facilitating their administration. In fact, such cachets were
developed and used much earlier by the parish priest of the village of Pérols (curé
of Pérols), Joseph Lambert Arnal (1798-1867). The present contribution
attempts to correct the erroneous perception about the paternity of the
invention and to answer the question of who was Arnal.